Wednesday, 30 June 2004

A senior figure in the Israeli government has said his country could wipe out the Gaza Strip in response to armed Palestinian groups' attacks on Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers.

"We could annihilate Bait Hanun and the rest of Gaza in a few hours. We certainly have the power to do so," Ze'ev Boim, Israel's deputy defence minister, told Gali Tzhal, the Israeli army radio.

Israel has one of the strongest armies in the world and is known to possess a huge stockpile of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons along with their delivery systems.

Other government officials have made similar belligerent remarks following Palestinian resistance attacks on an Israeli army outpost outside Khan Yunis in southern Gaza and a Jewish colony located in eastern Gaza.

Three Israelis were killed in the two attacks, which apparently were carried out in retaliation against the killing by the Israeli army of 13 Palestinian resistance figures earlier this week.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army continued to amass troops, tanks and armoured-personnel carriers outside Palestinian population centres and refugee camps in northern Gaza, apparently in preparation for a fresh incursion against suspected resistance groups.

Early on Tuesday morning, Israeli Apache helicopter gunships fired several rockets at a multi-storey building in central Gaza.

The Israeli army said the building, which houses several media offices, including Aljazeera TV, was "a Hamas building".

Writing the history of anything requires essentially the same process - adopting a method for studying a subject, amassing evidence which either proves or disproves the approach, and then writing up the findings in a way which are persuasive with those knowledgeable about the matter. Whether one is dealing with a most routine event or a most esoteric object, the task is the same. The only serious problems which can radically alter the process are when sources of crucial information either choose not to disclose important actions and information or the recorders of the results plot to distort the findings in writing up the conclusions.

While scientific and technical distortions of histories are legion - it is easy to manufacture data and results to prove almost any hypothesis - ones regarding society are much more difficult to achieve because they are much more rarely attempted successfully. In most questions regarding the world, there is a mass of evidence pertaining to them, and all controversial claims are subjected to a barrage of complaints from all kinds of perspectives and perceptions. Claims that the Holocaust never occurred, and the 2000 election for the US Presidency was not stolen by George W. Bush's Republicans come readily to mind.

The only exception is in the area of intelligence and covert operations where the governments concerned continuously refuse to acknowledge even the most obvious activities for all kinds of reasons, leaving historians largely in the dark about where to start and how to proceed in any history. The shortage of possible ideas and evidence to support them is nowhere more prevalent when one tries to write a history of a process which went terrible wrong. Here authorities will act as if no such process even occurred. Consequently, claims that the Dallas assassination of President Kennedy was the result of a botched conspiracy, or that Dr. David Kelly was assassinated by a similar process are harder to get even a hearing for, much less a favorable verdict by the public.

A good, recent example of historians failing to put together the strands of a similar process occurred when Viktor Gunnarsson, the first suspect in the assassination of Swedish statsminister Olof Palme
in Stockholm on February 28, 1986, was himself murdered outside Boone, North Carolina, during the early morning of December 4, 1993. Just before the killing, Borge Wingren, a former Swedish police inspector, had written a book, entitled He Killed Olof Palme - naming Gunnarsson, who often boasted of having committed the crime, as the statsminister's shooter - and now, it seemed, he had finally gotten what he most deserved.

Gunnarsson was a neo-Nazi, with all kinds of connections to covert operators, especially in the Central Intelligence Agency. Well before Palme's assassination, he established a Stockholm branch of the European Workers' Party (EWP), a right-wing group, despite its name, founded by the infamous Lyndon LaRouche. It was known for putting up posters around the Swedish capital, contrasting Palme's mentor, Tage Erlander, as the nation's father (landsfader) with his former secretary, Palme, the nation's betrayer (landsförrädare). For eliminating such vermin, LaRouche's group recommended vigorous applications of DDT.

In the fall of 1985, Gunnarsson went to an EWP convention in London, an assembly that the famous Soviet military historian, Edinbrugh's Professor John Erickson, helped put together for finally helping arrange the downfall of the USSR. Erickson, given the unprecedented contacts he had developed with the Soviets, especially in the Red Army, in helping Cornelius Ryan research The Last Battle, and in writing his own magisterial Stalin's War with Germany, had concluded that time had finally run out on the USSR's attempt to contain America's 'deterrence by puishment' through its bridgehead in Scandinavia by Russia's defense in depth - what he elaborated on in his 1985 article "The Soviet View of Deterrence: A General Survey."

And Gunnarsson came back from the conference to help arrange conditions on the ground in Stockholm by providing deceptions for the real assassin, an agent of former SAS Major David Walker's KMS firm, whose shooting was to provide the trigger for the whole operation. While Erickson came to Stockholm, demanding that Palme do something to stop Soviet intrusions into Swedish territory, Gunnarson did everything he could to make it look as if he was preparing to kill Palme. By now, a reasonable shot with a pistol, thanks to weapons training he had had with some US Marines from the Embassy in a basement of a house in a Stockholm suburb, Gunnarson told his girl friend that the statsminister would be shot with ammunition capable of penetrating bullet-proof jackets while the performance of his bodyguards was being reassessed. On the day of the murder, a friend of Gunnarsson's was surprised to see that he had shaved off his moustache.

On the night of the assassination, Gunnarsson did everything he could to make it look as if he were the assassin. He had an apartment along the escape route the real assassin took in making his getaway. He admitted that he was in the area when the shooting took place, and he had no alibi for where he actually was when it happened. Shortly after Palme was shot, he apparently tried to flag down a cab in a most agitated state, and then he barged into a cinema, 45 minutes after the movie had started, in a similar state which caught the attention of two girls who were sitting nearby.

Little wonder that when the plotters' plan to make Soviet spy Stig Bergling the real decoy failed, and the assassination did not trigger the final showdown with the Soviets - thanks to more spying for Moscow by the Agency's Aldrich "Rick" Ames and the Bureau's Robert Hanssen, the refusal of Altantic Fleet Commander Admiral Carl Trost to join up Task Force Eagle with NATO's Anchor Express Exercise for a military thrust across Norway's Finnmark region into the USSR's Kola Peninsula, and the disaster which occurred to the Norwegian forces when they attempted to move through the Vassdalen Valley - the Stockholm police were obliged to go after Gunnarsson, but it achieved little result. The police were so eager to indict him that it showed a key witness a photograph of Gunnarsson before a police lineup including him - what only resulted in the resignation of prosecutor K. G. Svensson after he had ordered Gunnarsson's release. Then an intensive examination of the jacket he was apparently wearing at the time for gunpowder traces proved fruitless.

The fiasco over Gunnarsson's arrest proved so embarrassing to Swedish authorities that he, instead of suing all the people who had libeled him while he was under arrest for the shooting, wrote a book, Jag och Palme mordet, in which he continued to spin his ambiguous tale about who really assassinated the statsminister.

While the police and the public moved on to possible other suspects of the killing, Washington's secret government obviously didn't, as I have tried to indicate in my article in the archive about why it took so long to uncover the spying for Moscow by Ames, and Hanssen. CIA was most anxious to drag out the process as long as possible in the hope that some solution to the Stockhom shooting would be arranged, and problems dealing with Iran-Contra would be cleaned up in the interim with as little dangerous fallout as possible. And this was certainly the case, as it was another eight years before Ames was even arrested.

By the early 1990s, Gunnarsson thought that it was safe to start a new life, especially since people angry over Palme's assassination were continually threatening to kill him over the still unsolved crime, and he moved to North Carolina in the States. While living in Salisbury, Viktor ultimately made the acquaintance of Kay and Jason Weden who were living chaotic lives of drugs and loose behavior, though she finally became engaged to a local police officer, Lamont C. Underwood, around Thanksgiving in 1992. She later admitted to having dated, and having had sex with another man, Johnny Denton, at the same time. Once Underwood learned of the affair, the engagement was called off, though it resumed at the New Year, only to be finally ended in June 1993.

By this time, the Agency was becoming most concerned about matters because Ames's spying was finally unraveling, and it was most concerned it could lead to Gunnarsson, especially what Felipe Vidal aka Charles Morgan told him as he tried to recruit assassins of the statsminister eight years earlier. While Gunnarsson did not shoot Palme, he might well have known who did, particularly after Oliver North, the operation's key player, paid Major Walker in April 1986 $100,000 for some unspecified operation. (For more on this, see the article about him in the archive.) This was after the hunt for Palme's killer had turned into a complete fiasco, and the assassin had clearly gotten away with it.

By now, the Bureau was conducting a full scale surveillance of Ames, following him wherever he went, going through his trash with a fine-tooth comb, and bugging what he said in his house or over the phone. The crucial give-aways as to his guilt were discovered by a colleague who was able to see the memory of what was in his laptop computer, the note he sent to his handler about arranging a meeting in Bogota, and conversations he had had with his wife Rosario about the trip and despositing the money he had obtained from it. For Langley, the most disturbing find was a note that Ames had written a year before but was only now discovered, indicating that his efforts were well known by Soviet counterintelligence, the MBRF - what implied that he knew how all the double agent operations in the USSR at the time of the Stockholm shooting had been stymied.

To limit any unnecessary fallout from the Ames' arrest, the Agency decided to do away with Gunnarsson - what Underwood had now set himself up as the fallguy for by having a confrontation with Kay Weden while she was having dinner with David Summer on November 12, 1993. While Underwood claims it was about problems he was having with her son Jason owing him money, and stealing things from his apartment, Weden and Summer later claimed that he threatened to kill Summer. Three weeks later, after Gunnarsson, Weden and her mother had dinner in a local restaurant, Gunnarsson disappeared, only to be found early in January naked, and quite dead outside Boone, shot through the forehead and the neck.

For the next several years, the state of North Carolina went through the greatest claims, contortions and cover ups apparently to convict Underwood of Gunnarsson's murder - essentially using 17 strands of hair from Gunnarsson for DNA evidence, and found allegedly on a mat in one of Underwood's cars to send him to prison for life for killing a man he never even met. (For details, readers should consult Underwood's web site.) The state of North Carolina, it seems, would like everyone to believe that Underwood was capable of killing anyone who had anything to do with Weden, even her mother, Mrs. Miller, except Kay herself.

The murder of Gunnarsson and the railroading of Underwood had the desired effect on the problems Ames was causing the Agency. His prosecution and imprisonment did not even lead to the discovery of Hanssen, much less who really killed Gunnarsson and why.

I read this and wept, no parent should have to bury their only child. And for what? To "save" a country we fucked over in the first place, and are we saving it? No fucking way are we saving it! Not even close! It's worse now than it's ever been! Our troops have become torturers on the orders of unseen people, made to take the blame and to die for the lies of men in suits who care nothing for any of us! We need more anger from Middle Class England, people need to understand that the time to stop this madness is now! If we leave it any longer then more parents will be burying more sons and the violence will spiral out of control until it engulfs the whole planet. If you don't believe me then re-read your history books because the shit is happening again!

When Gordon Gentle told his friends that he wanted to join the Army, they laughed at him because they thought he was too good-natured to make a soldier.

But, for the 6ft 2in, sports-mad teenager from Pollock in Glasgow, who was nicknamed "Soft" by his friends because of his family name, it was a dream come true when he joined the Royal Highland Fusiliers just three months ago.

He was proud to wear the uniform of a regiment with more than 200 battle honours to its name and he thought of the Army as a way of seeing the world. When his battalion was sent to Iraq, the enthusiastic boy-soldier asked his family not to worry - it was part of the job.He even told his mother that all he was doing was delivering water.

Yesterday morning a letter from the teenager dropped on the doormat of the family home, full of plans for the future and excitement that he was due to come home within two weeks. Sadly, the arrival of the letter came less than 24 hours after his parents and two sisters had been told that he was the latest casualty in a conflict for which they believe he was too young and poorly trained to have been sent.

"I can't believe my only son has gone," said his mother, Rose, yesterday as she was comforted by friends and family. "He shouldn't have been there, none of our boys should be there, Why don't Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon send their own families out to Iraq?

"My son was just a bit of meat to them, just a number. They don't care about him, all they're worried about is the next election. This is not our war, my son has died in their war over oil and they haven't even taken up the trouble of picking up the phone and say they're sorry for our loss."

Tuesday, 29 June 2004

In January 2003, a funding scandal threatened Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's re-election campaign. It involved Knesset/Likud Party vote buying. The American media covered the scandal but the lack of detail was evident. More digging was necessary. That digging was achieved by Anton Chaitkin in the January 24, 2003, Executive Intelligence Review, (larouchepub.com/2003/3003likud_usgansta.html) and needs to be read by anyone interested in Middle East politics.

Though illegal, foreign, especially American, donations have rolled into Israel's right-wing Likud party to the tune of millions of dollars. It doesn't take much to recognize long-range aims of ultra conservative American Jews and Israelis. This American funding takes on greater meaning when we see how its influence has crept into American politics. Are Americans doing Tel Aviv's bidding by sending our troops to be killed in the Middle East so Conservative Jews can achieve their aims?

In a democracy, there is nothing wrong with like-minded folks coming together to support a cause. What's wrong here is the suffering these aims are causing to the entire Middle East, including Israeli citizens. This determined group of wealthy Americans and Israeli politicians are not averse to taking action to achieve their aims. According to Chaitkin, Likud and cohorts are "driving the Middle East and the world into religious-ethnic wars." Their aim is to restore Israel to its Biblical borders. That means Palestinians must totally surrender, be "transported" or suffer ethnic cleansing, a war crime according to the Geneva Convention.

Likud's vote last year to never accept a Palestinian state affirms that position. Ariel Sharon himself has advocated Palestinian transport as a solution. Israeli opposition to Bush's Road Map to Peace centers on removal of the idea of a Palestinian state, at least for the present. This dodge has worked for fifty years.

Who then are the American advocates of this catastrophic policy? Let's start with Ariel Sharon. When Ariel Sharon retired as a General, the Israeli government granted him a long-term lease to his Sycamore Ranch in the Negev Desert. With the help of Meshulam Riklis, a wealthy Jewish-American businessman, Sharon was able to transform the place into his beloved ranch, ala Ronald Reagan's California home and Fernado Marcos' pied-a-terre in Hawaii. Riklis is also a member of the Roundtable Political Action Committee.

Another American politician with conservative ties in Israel is former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He was present at Sycamore Ranch with Sharon and Riklis, when the plan for West Bank settlements was developed. The expansion of West Bank and Gaza settlements has always been Sharon's baby.

Monday, 28 June 2004

During the past weeks, two American hostages have been killed and decapitated in Iraq and in Saudi Arabia. The media say that these crimes were comitted by Islamic Terrorists.

I have never read any Islamic Rule in the Koran which allows the decapitation of people whether they are Moslems, Christians or Jews, for any reason whatsoever.

I have never read an Islamic Rule which states that the killing of hostages is allowed. All what I remember that Islam has to say in this matter is that somebody who kills a “believer” unlawfully is sanctioned the same as if he had killed all the worlds nations. The word “believer” means "anyone who believes in God" in this context, not only Muslims.

The Koran states that the place where faith in God is held, and equally where the faith in God is broken, is in the heart. The Koran states that nobody can read what is in the hearts of others, or judge them as a believers or disbelievers. Even if their hearts are cut open, it is not possible to know if a person is a believer or not. Knowledge in this matter belongs only to God himself. This should be understood as meaning that Islam expressly forbids killing for religious reasons.

The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) recommended good treatment for hostages and prisoners during the past Islamic wars. He said: “You should not kill an old man, a child, or a woman. You should not cut a tree or destroy a church...”. Murdering and killing is outside of Islamic morals and principles, which are inviolable.

Seen from a more secular standpoint, an Arabic proverb says ”Nobody can cut the head of a person but his Creator”. This means again that nobody has the right to put an end to anothers life. While Islam expressly forbids suicide, it is still more acceptable to put an end to ones own life than to kill another person.

What does the word "Al-Qaeda" mean ? In Arabic, "Al-Qaeda" has a different meanings, among them “Base", "Ground", "Norm", "Rule", "Fundament", "Grammar". The exact meaning is dependent on the context in which it is used. It depends on the word which follows “Al-Qaeda” in the sentence. "Qawa'ad Askaria" is an Army Base, "Qawa'ad Lugha" stands for Grammar Rules (the Bases of Grammar).

"Qa'ada" is the infinitive of the verb "to sit". "Ma-Qa'ad" is a chair. "Al-Qaeda" is the base or fundament of something. "Ana raicha Al Qaeda" is colloquial for "I'm going to the toilet". A very common and widespread use of the word “Al-Qaeda” in different Arab countries in the public language is for the toilet bowl. This name comes from the Arabic verb “Qa'ada” which mean “to sit”, pertinently, on the “Toilet Bowl”. In most Arabs homes there are two kinds of toilets: “Al-Qaeda” also called the "Hamam Franji" or foreign toilet, and "Hamam Arabi" or “Arab toilet” which is a hole in the ground. Lest we forget it, the potty used by small children is called "Ma Qa'adia" or "Little Qaeda".

Those who founded the glorious "International of Islamic Terror, Al-Qaeda, probably knew too little about common use of Arabic language to know that by using this name for their organization, they risked becoming the laughing stock of everybody who speaks the Arabic "public" language.

To kidnap, torture and execute people are terrorist actions which are in no way related to God or to Islam, and these actions are not rewarded by paradise as some ignorant Western media figures would like to believe.

Friday, 25 June 2004

"FAHRENHEIT 9/11" documents that the American people have been lied to in the push for war. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was not a threat. Iraq had no link to 9-11. Iraq was not supporting Al Qaeda. The government of Iraq under Saddam killed far fewer Iraqi people than the government of Iraq under George Bush. The Kurds were actually gassed by Iran (and does the name "Waco" ring a bell?). The only nuclear weapons found in Iraq are the tons of depleted uranium munitions dropped on the Iraqi people by the United States. And, far from being the champion of human rights, the United States stands exposed as a willing user of torture on prisoners who in many cases were innocent of any wrongdoing.

That's the major message. We The People were lied to about, well, just about everything. Including 9-11 itself. Bush sat there and read about goats while the towers fell. The video tape of "Osama's" confession turned out to be fake. Osama himself turned out to be a fake, a CIA asset trained and funded by the US to fight the USSR in Afghanistan. Blair's dossier turned out to be fake, plagiarized from a student thesis. The mobile biological weapons trailers turned out to be fake; actually balloon inflators sold by the British to Iraq. And on and on and on. Deception after deception after deception.

Everyone agrees on this major message. We've been lied to. We are the victims of history's greatest and deadliest hoax; a hoax perpetrated to ignite a war of conquest. Michael Moore's film does a great job of confronting that dealy fact.

But, Michael Moore has himself either fallen for disinformation, or simply not done his homework, and seems willing to accept without question the official story of 9-11.

Now, it may be that Michael Moore just didn't care to get into 9-11 itself that deeply. Moore seems mostly focused on the aircraft allowed to fly out of the United States in the days immediately after 9-11 while the rest of the nation's aircraft were grounded. On these flights were members of Osama bin Laden's family. The Bush's and bin Ladens go back a long way. Osama's brother was George's business partner in Abusto Energy and source of the seed money to start the company. It is reportedly because of this connection that Osama was recruited to play holy warrior for the CIA in Afghanistan against the USSR. So there is no question that those flights did occur, and that Osama's family members were among the passengers.

At issue is whether this fact of the aircraft flights points the finger of blame for 9-11 at Saudi Arabia. After first being told that Afghanistan was to blame for 9-11, then Iraq was to blame for 9-11, one should take any claims of any Arab country being identified as the perpetrator of 9-11 with a huge heaping of salt. Michael Moore, who clearly recognized the claims about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, the supposed link from Saddam to Al Qaeda and to 9-11 as lies, shows a dangerous naivte in his willingness accept the official story of 9-11 without question.

So, let's take a look at the idea of Saudi Arabia as the perpetrator of 9-11. Why would they do it? What would they gain? Immediately after the attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attack would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: "It's very good……. Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)". The months since 9-11 have borne that out. US support for Israel's agenda grew stronger as Israel committed more atrocities against the Palestinians. More money flowed from the US to Israel. World opinion, which had been growing against Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, temporarily abated. World hostility towards Arabs in general grew. Forgotten was the fact that Israel was actually in defiance of more UN Resolutions than Saddam had ever been. And, it was assumed at the start of the war that direct access to Iraq's oil would reduce American demand for Saudi oil, and likely force prices down as Iraq's oil came to market. So, where was the motive? Do you really think Saudi Arabia would commit an act that would strengthen US-Israeli ties? Do you really think Saudi Arabia would commit an act that would undercut their own oil revenues? Do you really think Saudi Arabia would commit an act that would anger the world against Arabs? Me neither.

Here are some facts that for some reason did not make itinto the final cut of "Fahrenheit 9/11"

On 9-11, five men were arrested for suspicious behavior, cheering and laughing while the WTC collapsed. In the van police found cash, multiple passports, and maps with the World Trade Center highlighted. Bomb-sniffing dogs indicated explosives residue were present in the truck. The arrested men were Israelis, later identified by Pacific Radio as agents of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad. According to Carl Cameron's FOX News story on the Israeli spy ring, the US Government classified evidence that linked the arrested Israeli spies to 9-11. The Mossad agents were using a moving company, Urban Moving Systems, for a cover. The owner of the company, Dominic Suter, abandoned his business after 9-11 and fled to Israel on 9-14.

The 9-11 scene was littered with passports using Saudi names, passports which the FBI admitted just ten days later were high-quality fakes using identities stolen from Arab men. We don't know who was on those planes, only who we were supposed to THINK were on those planes. Why would Saudi Arabia commit 9-11 and use phony passports pointing back to themselves? If Saudi Arabia had done 9-11, it is safe to assume the phony passports would have likely pointed to Israel. FBI Director Robert Mueller has admitted in public that there is actually no evidence that proves the named 9-11 hijackers were actually on the aircraft.

The warnings of the attack sent to Odigo in New York and Israel before the 9-11 planes had even left the ground confirms beyond question that Israeli-linked companies did receive advance warning. Why would Saudi Arabia warn Israeli companies if they were behind 9-11?

It wasn't a Saudi-owned company in charge of security at all three of the 9-11 airports.

If Saudi Arabia was a partner with Al Qaeda for 9-11, why is Al Qaeda carrying out terror attacks against the Saudi Royal family now?

Speaking of "Al Qaeda", when Palestinian police arrested an Al Qaeda cell, they discovered they were holding a group of Mossad agants.

A final point: The nation that helped the US Government stage a fake terror event to launch wars of conquest in the Mideast would be in an ideal position to blackmail the US Government with that very secret. So, look back over the more than two years since 9-11 and find the nation for whom the US Government just cannot seem to do enough, cannot give enough money and weapons, cannot block enough UN Resolutions, the nation for whom a long standing neutral foreign policy has been cast aside in favor out total support for an expansionist agenda. Find the nation whose leaders openly brag of their control of the US Government.

If Michael Moore didn't quite do all his homework with regard to who may have been behind the 9-11 attack, that does not change the fact that the people of the United States were lied to to trick them into wars. And it is THAT message of the film which is the important one. But the hard fact remains that Michael Moore did not get ALL of the story of 9-11. Not by a longshot. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is just the tip of the iceberg.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is not an indictment of just George Bush. Fahrenheit 9/11 is not an indictment of just Republicans. Fahrenheit 9/11 is an indictment of the entire US Government that had to know Bush was lying to the American people to initiate as war and stood there smiling blandly while he did it. Like Hitler, Bush could not do what he did without a lot of cooperation by the entire government and the media. Look at the voting records for the authorization for the use of force in Iraq and in the draconian assaults on our freedoms. Both parties voted those "Ayes". The rush to war and dictatorship was a bipartisan one, worthy of bipartisan blame. Everyone is spinning Fahrenheit 9/11 to attack their own favorite scapegoats, but the truth is there is more than enough blame for the current state of the nation to share all around.

Genetically modified food is coming to Britain. Two applications for the approval of GM animal feed are reaching their final stages in Brussels. This will lead to their import into the UK, and into the human food chain. The 1998 moratorium put in place by the EU to prevent this is being broken.

One of these applications concerns Syngenta Bt 11 GM sweetcorn. It failed to get a majority vote in the EU agricultural ministers' council but, following ministerial deadlock, it has now been approved by the commission itself (as Ukip might note). The second application is for Monsanto NK 603 GM maize, which is being introduced under the novel foods regulations. It also failed to get a majority vote in the EU's scientific regulatory committee. Ministers will now decide and, if they don't agree, the commission will take the decision.

The safety of GM food remains a very open question. And one is not encouraged when the guardian of our food safety, the Food Standards Agency, and particularly its chairman, John Krebs, is so strongly pro-GM. They naively rely on company data to prove the safety of GMOs, despite numerous reports which have revealed the dubious credibility of company studies. The FSA has also focused mainly on the safety of inserted GM material, and neglected the inherent risks of the gene insertion process itself, such as the production of new toxins and allergens.

This is a remarkable omission given that the GM process is so new. GM introduces genes from other species, even distant ones, which nature would never do. It also breaks up nature's all-important sequencing of the genes. Making a GM plant thus involves breaking and joining the DNA at random locations. This leads to substantial scrambling of both foreign and host DNA, which can produce abnormalities in animals and unexpected toxins and allergens in food crops.

The genetic material of any species can be recombined and transferred in the lab. Genes and new combinations can be introduced into our environment and food chain that have never previously existed. Indeed, GM DNA is often designed to cross species barriers. Its structural instability enhances horizontal gene transfer and recombination, the very process that creates new diseases and spreads antibiotic and drug resistance.

Against this background it is almost incredible, but true, that there have been no peer-reviewed clinical studies on the human health effects of GM food. Instead, when the biotech companies manufacture a new GM product, they compare it with its non-GM counterpart in terms of nutrients, toxins and allergens, and if they allege it to be "substantially equivalent", they deem it to be safe. Such an assumption would never be allowed in the regulation of pesticides or drugs. It is simply a device to circumvent direct trials of the effects of GM foods on human health, and ensures that GM crops can be patented without even animal testing.

US-Israeli Mercenaries Pose As al-Qaeda And Carry Out Staged Beheadings

It's truly saddening - and frightening - to see so many people from the 9/11 truth movement and the nominally intelligent sectors of American society duped by the new government fairy tales that Americans Nick Berg and Paul Johnson and Korean Kim Sun-il were beheaded by al-Qaeda terrorists when in fact the perpetrators were international mercenaries who draw their paychecks from the subterranean murder bureau run by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, Israel's Mossad and the hired henchmen of morally bankrupt and Bush-connected Saudi Arabian royalty.

Now that Ashcroft's fake terror alerts within the U.S. fail to draw even a ripple of attention - except for honest intelligence analysts who quickly debunk them as calculated fantasy - the forces of evil run by Dick Cheney and his Soviet-style hit men within the Bush administration have resorted to actual grisly performances of preposterous violence overseas in clumsy attempts to deflect attention from embarrassing news on the homefront and build a case for their incipient invasion of oil fields in eastern Saudi Arabia as their brutal rape of Iraq continues unabated.

But as usual Americans are kept in the dark by their mindlocked mainstream media, surely more warped than the state-controlled Soviet press ever was, and are spoonfed magical tales of evil al-Qaeda deeds from newsrooms that have CIA censors coordinating their vomitous expectorations.

With its questionable video sequences and lack of amputation blood spurts, Berg's mutilation has already been largely debunked as a depraved videodrama filmed inside Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the crowning achievement of a brief but continuing era of perversion in that notorious prison that already has many in Washington whispering about charges of treason against President Bush for approving torture policies that violate all manner of international law, including recently passed U.S. statutes.

Johnson's dramatic demise was less visible and more circumspect, but the prompt annihilation of his supposed killers - all claimed to be important cogs in Arabia's squadron of al-Qaeda terrorists - simply disintegrates credulity, especially because the corpse of their victim was not immediately produced. It was a handy way of stifling further inquiries into the matter, and a handy way for Western petroleum interests to rid themselves of those it perceives to be its enemies. The only way this information and action could have unfolded the way it did was if the neocons had a mole on the inside of the operation, which of course they did, since they were running the operation.

The beheading of the Korean contract worker was, like the other two, a public relations gambit primarily designed to cover up more bad news for Bush.

Consider the sequence: Berg's killing took public focus off the pornographic prison scandal, Johnson's death stole the headlines from revelations about Bush's torture memorandum and his possibly treasonous culpability in the outing of a CIA agent, and Kim's demise diverted attention from the Kean commission's stunning findings that the government let 9/11 happen on purpose.

The purpose of the complicity of some Saudi royals' with the Mossad and CIA is to forestall a revolution which is about to overcome them, and cut off all oil supplies to the West. Yet not all Saudi royals are in on the plot, as Crown Prince Abdullah and Saudi foreign minister Saudi al Faisal have often insisted that Zionist provocateurs are behind the terror on Saudi soil.

In addition to being another clumsy attempt to defame Islamics, the grotesque beheadings are meant to take the appalling onus off the avalanche of stories detailing American depravity in its handling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as whip up additional fervor for new wars against the Saudis and Iranians. And all the while, the leaders of the U.S. are behind the horrific murders, just as they were behind the attacks of 9/11, Oklahoma City, the bombing of the African embassies, and all the other lethal deceptions of recent decades.

Kawther Salam, an expatriate Palestine journalist writing from Vienna, brings up some prescient questions regarding the convenient timing of all these beheadings.

"A strange coincidence around the murder of Paul Johnson is that the Saudi Police apparently cooperated with those who abducted him. Why would a security service trained by American and British C.I.A. fronts like the Vinnell Corp. cooperate with Al-Qaeda, their purported enemy ?

"This is the second time during the last weeks that Saudi security forces have cooperated with Al-Qaeda. If this starts happening regularly, it would suggest either a very grave instability in the Kingdom or that the Saudi security forces are run in accordance with American interests."

I believe the situation is that in either case, you have your answer - and another reason to believe al-Qaeda is clearly an operational arm of the CIA, a conveniently blamable patsy to be identified every time a bomb is used to make a political point. The point is that in all these beheadings and bombings, the chief beneficiaries are always the forces of evil, namely Israel and certain multinational corporations. But the blame is always trumpeted from America's Jewish-dominated media to be placed squarely on the shoulders of mysterious Islamic bandits.

U.S. legal experts and human rights activists on Thursday questioned assurances by President Bush that the U.S. government never ordered and would never order detainees to be tortured.

The White House this week released a thick file of declassified papers to try to demonstrate that Bush and his top aides, in setting policy on interrogation methods, insisted that detainees be treated humanely.

"Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country: We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being," Bush told reporters at the White House.

The administration also appeared to distance itself from a Justice Department memo that argued that the president, as commander in chief, was not constitutionally bound by key U.S. anti-torture laws.

The argument that Bush was not bound by anti-torture laws had caused a firestorm at home and abroad, said Tufts University international law professor Michael Glennon.

"Why have a Constitution at all if the president can unilaterally decide who to torture, when to torture and why to torture?" he said.

He said the significance of the White House retreat was still unclear.

Thursday, 24 June 2004

Seymour Hersh found out that hundreds of Mossad foreign fighters have been in Iraq for a long time.

Their specialty: car bombs, sexual torture, beheadings.

These Israeli citizens came into Iraq disguised as Arab or Kurdish civilians, businessmen. Maybe "contractors"? Under contract with the Pentagon's neocon office? Your tax dollars at work?

How much of their work is blamed on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? How much of Israel's terrorism is blamed on "Al-Qaeda"?

I have investigated the development of the "mujahideen" and here is my conclusion:

In the 80's, Israel supervised the recruitment of Arab Afghan "mujahideen" supposedly to fight against Russia. They became cannon fodder and refugees before they ended up in Guantanamo.

THEIR REAL PURPOSE WAS TO HELP ISRAEL CREATE A USEFUL MYTH: AL-QAEDA. The Arab mujahideen were rather harmless as recent revelations from Guantanamo have shown.

Israeli and Jewish-American intelligence specialists were trusted by the CIA--Israelis being "allies" and experts on the Middle East--to recruit the Arab "mujahideen" to be used by the US against Russia. Israelis disguised as Arab or Pakistani missionaries (tablighis) even ran the recruitment centers. Israelis playing Muslim missionaries (tablighis) were caught in India and Israel rushed to retrieve them.

The Arab "mujahideen" themselves were inefficient and almost useless. I have heard from the relatives of many who died in vain in clumsy incidents in Afghanistan.

All the Zionists wanted was a story, a myth that would enable them to create another myth: "Al-Qaeda." The Zionists needed this myth as an excuse for their long-term plans for the "war on terror," a war to destabilze the Middle East and pit the world against Muslims.

Neither Bin Laden nor the Arab refugees he took care of were of any military significance. The Afghans themselves were the real efficient mujahideen because they knew the territory and the tribal structure. The Afghans actually saw the Arabs as nuisance.

Arabs say "nothing comes out of a pot except what's in it." When the neocon liars speak about Arab/Islamic terrorism and Al-Qaeda, they are in fact talking about what they themselves are doing. They are talking about Israeli covert activities.

No Arabs are involved. Israeli commandos move around using forged or stolen Arab ID's and--if necessary--they wear masks to hide their real identities, such as in beheading videos.

Israelis continue to fake whatever it takes to prove that the "war on terror," i.e. the war on Arabs has to continue.

Listen to them more carefully, folks. The Zionists in our midst have been telling us the truth all along. Just replace "Arab" with "Israeli," replace "Al-Qaeda" with "Mossad," etc.

This story made me feel all warm and fuzzy, I hope Walmart gets shafted so badly that it bankrupts them and that it takes Asda down with them, if any one company deserves this type of action it is Walmart.

A federal judge allowed a sex discrimination suit against retail powerhouse Wal-Mart to go forward as a class action, the biggest such case in US history, documents showed Tuesday.

The case covers about 1.6 million women, including current and former employees at Wal-Mart, which is the largest private employer in the United States and world's biggest retail company.

In his ruling, Judge Martin Jenkins of US District Court in San Francisco said the class can seek punitive damages in the case, which alleges women were paid less and given fewer promotions than men.

The judge called the case "historic in nature, dwarfing other employment discrimination cases that came before" the court, and compared it to the Brown versus Board of Education case on school discrimination 50 years earlier.

"This anniversary serves as a reminder of the importance of the courts in addressing the denial of equal treatment under the law whenever and by whomever it occurs," the judge wrote.

Wal-Mart chief spokeswoman Mona Williams said the substance of the case has not even come to trial, but that the company would seek to reverse the decision on class-action status.

"Let's keep in mind that today's ruling has absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the case," Williams said.

"Judge Jenkins is simply saying he thinks it meets the legal requirements necessary to move forward as a class action. We strongly disagree with his decision and will seek an appeal."

But plaintiffs called the decision a landmark.

"Wal-Mart has been living in the America of 30 years ago, and those days are over," said Joseph Sellers, a Washington lawyer for the plaintiffs.

"Certification of this class shows that no employer, not even the world's largest employer, is above the law. This decision sets the stage for women at Wal-Mart to get their fair share of pay and promotions which have been denied them for years."

Sellers was among the first to file suit in June 2001 on behalf of a half-dozen women who claimed they were consistently held back from promotions and were paid less than their male counterparts.

The suit prompted an outpouring of claims from women throughout the country, resulting in the largest civil action ever brought against a private company.

What has revisionism to do with libertarianism? Many libertarians see no connection. Steeped in the theory of the non-aggression axiom, and that the State has always been the major aggressor, these libertarians see no need to concern themselves with the grubby details of the misdeeds and interrelations between Germany, Russia, Britain, the United States, and other particular states. If all States are evil, why worry about the details?

The first answer is that theory is not enough in dealing with the con­crete world of reality. If all States are evil, some are more evil than others, some particular States have engaged in enormously more aggres­sion, both internally against their subjects, and externally against the citizens of other States. The State of Monaco has committed far less aggression than the State of Great Britain.

If we libertarians are to un­derstand the real world, and to try to bring about the victory of liberty in that world, we must understand the actual history of concrete, existent States. History provides the indispensable data by which we can unders­tand and deal with our world, and by which we can assess the relative guilt, the relative degrees of aggression committed by the various states. Monaco, for example, is not one of our major problems in this world, but we can only learn this from knowledge of history, and not from a priori axioms. But of course to learn about concrete reality takes work, not only a substantial amount of reading, but also reading with the basic elements of revisionism in mind. Work that investigates the complexities of history, and that is not easily reducible to catch phrases and sloganeer­ing.

Revisionism is an historical discipline made necessary by the fact that all States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of "Court Intellectuals," whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public.

The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimate, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public. By doing so, the Revisionist, even if he is not a libertarian personally, performs a vitally important libertarian service.

Hence, the Revisionist historian performs crucial libertarian tasks regardless of his own personal ideology. Since the State cannot function, cannot command majority support vital to its existence without imposing a network of deception, Revisionist history becomes a crucial part of the tasks of the libertarian movement. Crucial especially because Revisionism goes beyond pure theory to expose and reveal the specific lies and crimes of the State as it exists in concrete reality.

Tuesday, 22 June 2004

So America is getting a taste of what MI5 has been dishing out to us for years, that still doesn't make it right! We are being lied to, spied on, killed, tortured and manipulated by people claiming to "represent" and "protect" us.

ALL GOVERNMENTS ARE LYING COCKSUCKERS!

Each and every weekday, 11 federal judges meet in secret in Washington and review FBI and Department of Homeland Security requests for warrants to spy on Americans.
And, on average, the court approves seven warrants a day, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

But while the numbers of warrants issued are obtainable (only after a long, bureaucratic battle with the Department of Justice), very little else is known about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secure chambers at the Department of Justice Headquarters.

Some privacy groups refer to the court as a “Star Chamber,” a secret coven of judges who hold the future of Americans in their judicial hands. Although the court was created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, it has become recent tool of the Bush Administration to wiretap, follow, investigate and harass Americans under the guise of the war against terrorism.

And the law allows the court to conduct its business in secret, with no oversight from any federal agency or legislative body, including the U.S. Congress.

“This secrecy is unnecessary and allows problems in applying the law to fester,” three U.S. Senators – one Democrat and two Republicans – told the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a letter last year.

The three – Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Charles Grassley of Iowa – say their own investigations have found widespread inaccuracies in warrant applications, breaking of the law by top government attorneys and outright sloppiness in executing the warrants.

“Without oversight and public scrutiny, there is no compelling reason for the court or the Department of Justice to follow the rule of law,” the letter said.

Errors in warrant applications have quadrupled since 2000, the senators found, and one FBI agent made so many repeated mistakes he was barred from ever appearing before the justices again.

Yet even with the mistakes, applications for warrants are routinely rubber-stamped by the court. Records obtained through FOIA show that of 3,887 applications for warrants submitted to the court from 2001-2003, only four were rejected (all in 2003). Before those four rejections in 2003, no application before the court had been rejected among the 12,612 processed between 1979 and 2000.

Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, the court reviewed between 500 and 700 applications per year. Since the attacks, the applications have more than doubled, with a record 1,724 applications submitted in 2003.

Legislation pending in both houses of Congress would grant the Department of Justice and the secret court even more leeway in approving wiretaps and surveillance. The Bush Administration wants the law expanded without any oversight by Congress but an increasing number of Representatives and Senators say they want to know more about the court’s activities.

Last year, the American Bar Association also urged more Congressional oversight, saying it is impossible to determine if the court is following the law or abusing it.

The man accused of supplying the dynamite used in the al-Qaeda train bombings in Madrid was in possession of the private telephone number of the head of Spain’s Civil Guard bomb squad, it emerged yesterday.

Emilio Suárez Trashorras, who is alleged to have supplied 200kg of dynamite used in the bombs, had obtained the number of Juan Jesús Sánchez Manzano, the head of Tedax...

The revelation has raised fresh concerns in Madrid about links between those held responsible for the March bombings, which killed 190 people, and Spain’s security services, and shortcomings in the police investigation. Señor Suárez Trashorras and two other men implicated in the bombings have already been identified as police informers. Other members of the group had evaded police surveillance, despite concerns within the security services about their activities and evidence of their association with al-Qaeda.

The telephone number of Señor Sánchez Manzano was contained in a Civil Guard dossier handed to Juan del Olmo, the investigating judge, at the National Court in Madrid. The number was written on a piece of paper found in the possession of Carmen Toro, the wife of Señor Suárez Trashorras. Both are in custody accused of supplying dynamite used in the Madrid bombs.

With President Ronald Reagan's re-election in November 1984, the militant anti-communists in Washington and London decided that the day had finally come for rolling back the Iron Curtain, and bringing down the Soviet Union. With the death of CPSU General Secretary Yuri Andropov, replaced by the caretaker government of chain-smoking Konstantin Chernenko, the Soviet bloc seemed to be reduced to a regime on auto-pilot, only going through the motions of protecting itself while expecting the apparent inevitable - its collapse - what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government was already well advanced in achieving, and the Republican administration in Washington would now follow. With the policy of détente with Moscow well and truly buried, it was time to do all the dirty work to make it a reality.

Andropov's death seemed an augury of the system's own fate. Head of the KGB since 1967 - thanks to his belief after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution that only force could keep communist systems in power - he directed the suppression of all dissent against the established regimes in Czechoslovakia in 1968, in Afghanistan in 1979, and Warsaw in 1981. In these efforts, Andropov was assisted by Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of his personal secretariat who later became head of the KGB's First Chief Directorate, and ultimately the chief of the foreign intelligence service itself. According to Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin in The Sword and the Shield, Andropov deliberately destroyed the Prague Spring on the pretext that the CIA and NATO were behind it - what he knew to be untrue. (pp. 256-7) In fact, Mitrokhin was inclined to become a mole for the West because of the fabrications Andropov engaged in justifying the overthrow of Afghan President Hafizullah Amin, a so-called "agent of American imperialism." (p. 11) For the Soviet defector, the process was completed when the KGB chief forced the Polish communists to adopt martial law in order to suppress Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, its Polish intelligence counterpart fabricating a film claiming that it was in the pay of the West. (p. 522ff.)

Little wonder that after Andropov took over control from Leonid Brezhnev, he apparently let all his paranoid fears run wild after Reagan rejected his calls for reducing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Euorpe, and for a summit to promote world peace by calling for the adoption of STAR WARS. Then, according to most reports, Moscow "went ape" when Korean Air Lines Flight 007 inadvertently strayed over Soviet air space in the Far East, resulting in its being shot down by a Soviet fighter with the loss of 269 lives, including 61 Americans - what resulted in West Germany approving the deployment of U.S. Pershing II and cruise missiles. Kryuchkov, whose KGB had long been issuing instructions to counter alleged Western threats, and which Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky published later in two volumes, now used NATO's routine Able Archer Exercise as an excuse for instituting Operation RYAN (the Russian acronym for nuclear missile attack), calling for fortnightly reports from all residencies of evidence of Western plans for a first strike against the Soviets - what Andrew and Mitrokhin again dismissed as being totally without foundation. (p. 433) According to them, thanks to deliberate efforts by Washington and London, starting in 1984 to reassure Moscow of their peaceful intentions, cooler heads and plans soon prevailed in the Kremlin.

Actually, East-West relations were entering their most dangerous phase of the whole Cold War, London and Washington having finally patched up their dealings with one another after the Falklands War, and Reagan's invasion of Grenada. These disputes had been an expected result of tearing up détente with the Soviets, and putting the struggle with Moscow back on an east-west plane. As long as Alexander Haig was Secretary of State, the West would concentrate upon stopping apparent Soviet expansion in Latin and South America - what led to the Argentine invasion of the islands in return for services rendered in helping suppress Nicaragua's Sandinistas and their supporters, especially Cuba. The invasion cost SOD Lord Carrington his job, and Britain's reoccupation of the Falklands cost Haig his. The invasion of Grenada, the most outrageous one until the latest one into Iraq, was carried out to satisfy those in the White House still unhappy with the situation in Latin America, giving them an opportunity to carry out an integrated, preemptive operation against an unsuspecting target, though the failure of the military forces to quickly silence the lightly armed Cubans left much to be desired.

By this time, Reagan's people had instituted, and developed all the forces necessary for carrying out the real thing against Moscow itself while marginalizing all the agencies and individuals who might oppose it. The biggest changes had occurred at the National Security Council, and the Department of the Navy, and at the expense of Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon - what congressional denial of authority and funds, particularly the Boland amendments, had assisted. Of course, in any showdown with the Soviets, the Army and the Air Force had the most to lose, so their input had to be removed from any covert plans - what Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. effected by making himself the sole commander of its forces. (For details, see Gregory Vistica, Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy, p. 87ff.) Lehman sidelined any officials, starting with Admiral Hyman Rickover and including Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Tom Hayward who opposed his plans, or threatened his having sole access to the President's ear when it came to operations.

They became increasingly provocative. In late summer 1981, 83 ships from the American, British and Norwegian navies under the command of Lehman crony Admiral James 'Ace' Lyons sailed silently through the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom Gap to test Soviet responses when confronted with active measures jamming their radars, and transmitting false radar signals of their own. Its air cover simulated attacks on Soviet tracking planes when they sought to refuel. Then a carrier battle group, led by the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, sailed through the Norwegian Sea off the North Cape into the Barents Sea. "They then sailed near the militarily important Kola Peninsula," Benjamin Fischer has written in A Cold War Conundrum, "and remained there for nine days before rejoining the main group." (A conundrum is a puzzle historians shoud eschew, no matter how unfunny the solution.) To corroborate the success of the new Maritime Strategy, Secretary Lehman joined the task force by air transport just off Norway's Lofoten Peninsula, providing the precedent, in his flight suit and aviator's leather jacket, for President George W. Bush's victory junket after the second Iraq War, and celebrating the confrontation with Moscow in similar terms: "We're going to kick their ass. And you guys are here proving it." (Quoted from Vistica, p. 133.)

Just when Andropov was throwing out feelers to ease the tension, Washington staged similar exercises involving three battle groups inside the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Sea of Okhotsk, and outside the vital base at Petropavlovsk in the Far East. Killer submarines and anti-submarine aircraft carried out simulated attacks on Soviet bastions - where Moscow intended to protect its nuclear submarines during any showdown with America. Planes from the carriers then simulated air attacks on the island of Zelenny in the Kuriles. After the exercise concluded, commanding Admiral, and now Hayward's replacement as CNO James Watkins concluded that the Soviets "...are as naked as a jaybird there, and they know it." His new appointment was confirmation that implementation of the Maritime Strategy in some way was just a matter of time.

All the while, US bombers and submarines continuously penetrated Soviet teritory to determine their responses to intrusions, and how they could best frustrate any counter measures. B-52s flew over the North Pole, and down towards the USSR to activate its radars. Fighter bombers were regularly violating Soviet air space on the periphery to see how quickly, and with what forces Moscow would respond. Then the Kremlin, under the leadership of hawk Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, ordered the shooting down of KAL Flight 007 while the Soviets were conducting a missile firing in the most militarized area on the globe, believing that the airliner and/or a US spy plane were violating Soviet teritory to see how the intrusion affected its telemetry, and firing. By this time, President Reagan had long signed off all control of the missions that US attack and intelligence gathering submarines were conducting in the Barents and Okhotsk Seas, intended to tap its vital lines of naval communication, to tag Soviet undersea and surface vessels as they carried out their missions, and to trap its nuclear submarines as they left port or hid in their underwater, arctic bastions.

With the Pentagon slimming so to carry out risky, covert operations against the Soviets, it was hardly surprising that the National Security Council followed suit. With the CIA greatly restricted because of congressional resolutions, NSA Robert McFarlane provided voluntarily for assistant Marine Major Oliver North what Navy Secretary Lehman arranged behind the back of SOD Caspar Weinberger. Actually, Lehman had seen to North's promotion to the NSC because of his interest in re-activating battleships to combat terrorism while serving as an instructor at the Naval War College, and while working on its Latin American desk, North soon had the drug barons helping the Contras, and David Walker's KMS and Saladin firms providing training and technical expertise. North had been introduced to the former SAS Major by Lehman, and the connection soon put the fight with the communists more on an East-West plane as the invasion of Grenada demonstrated. Ultimately, Walker's operations against the Sandinistas proved so succesfull that he was advertising in London for more mercenaries to help fulfill missions.

By this time, the Thatcher government was essentially prepared to take preemptive action against Moscow, though it had far less forces, and reason to do so than Washington. The Prime Minister, in establishing a ministry she could totally trust, had gotten rid of all potential troublemakers among her fellow politicians except Michael Heseltine, and the key intelligence posts were held by men she could rely upon to go along with whatever was planned. MI6's Director General Sir Colin Figures was totally committed to conducting covert operations to settle scores with the KGB for all the indignities that Kim Philby had inflicted upon SIS. Thatcher loyalist Anthony Duff, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), would now replace Sir John Jones as the Security Service's Director General because he had not been active enough in combatting terrorism at home and abroad - what was essential in staging almost any preemptive action. "One thing Duff had in abundance," Mark Urban explained in UK Eyes Alpha, "was nerve..." (p. 44) Duff's replacement at the JIC would be Sir Percy Craddock who still believed that Moscow was seeking world domination.

After Reagan's re-election, the White House instituted changes which could facilitate what the President had only joked about up until now - bombing Russia out of existence in the next five minutes. (Lou Cannon, President Reagan, p. 473) The plan called for Chief of Staff James Baker and Donald Regan switching jobs, and White House counsellor Ed Meese becoming the new Attorney General. Baker, tired of cleaning up everything the President wrongly put his foot in, was eager to go to the Treasury where he could get the necessary foreign policy experience which would make him a presidential candidate. "Under Regan," Cannon added, "the blunders would become more frequent and damage control would be lacking." (p. 494) Meese's addition to the mix was to extol the President's competence and control of things rather than admit he needed a vast education of what his job really entailed - what played completely into Nancy Reagan's little White House world of likes and premonitions.

While 1985 turned out to be the year of the spy, no one seems prepared to talk about its significance, and how it fitted into earlier Western operations and the Soviet RYAN response. By now, the KGB's Kryuchkov had learned that the West's toning down operations and rhetoric against Moscow were just the quiet before the storm. Any preemptive attack against the Soviet Union would not be advertised in advance, and lead to a nuclear conflagation - what Operation RYAN had originally planned to determine. The attack would come as a complete surprise - what rendered the spying about codes for the Soviets by John Walker's family, Ronald Pelton, and possibly Israel's Jonathan Pollard essentially valueless - and it was planned to avoid nuclear war - the Soviet underwater nuclear deterrent would be so degraded by Anglo-American attack submarine assaults that Moscow would admit defeat in the Cold War. For Washington and London, the big problem was finding an appropriate trigger, as with exploding an atomic bomb, for the action, once it proved feasible, and necessary.

The process called for a race to recruit double agents from the other side, and to expose spies who had outlived their usefulness, but would give the other side a false sense of what was in the works - Washington and London wanting to learn more and more about what Moscow expected in any showdown, and how to frustrate it, while the Soviets tried to determine all its bad apples, and turn them around or off in any crisis. The agents Washington and London were relying upon to set up Moscow fatally were Sergei Motorin, Valeri Martynov, Victor Gundarev, Boris Yuzhin, Oleg Gordievsky, Gennady Varenik, and others. They would provide input about the Kremlin's culpability in any apparent first strike, and how its response could be exploited by one from the West. In the process, Britain and America would settle scores with Scandinavia's traitors too, the spies and agents of influence who had made Sweden with its flexible policy of neutrality such a center of concern, and whose remedy had been outlined by defector Anatoliy Golitsyn in New Lies for Old.

The countdown for the showdown really commenced in earnest when Prime Minister Olof Palme won reelection in September 1985, ensuring that he would be in power during the most difficult dealings with Mikhail Gorbachev, the new Soviet leader who promised to reform the Soviet Union. Of course, Washington and London were not interested in reforms but in its rejection. Thatcher played for time in dealing with Gorbachev at the Anglo-Soviet summit in December 1984 by acting as if he were someone she could do business with, provided he was solicitous of and responsive to her wishes. Gorbachev reciprocated in kind the following July by replacing Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko with close colleague Eduard Shevardnadze while double agent Gordievsky, the KGB resident in London who had now come under a cloud, was being allowed to make his escape from Moscow.

This was happening because Western intentions and plans had become so dangerous that Aldrich "Rick" Ames of the Agency had finally decided to spy for Moscow in order to avoid dangerous consequences Washington was threatening - a naming of double agents which soon put Gordievsky's career at risk, and apparently explaining his defection. The agents exposed prevented the West from learning that the Soviets had 82 nuclear-armed SS-23 missiles in East Germany and the USSR under hawk Ogarkov's command, where its ham radio operators were located who could detail Moscow's reaction to military surprises, what was the Red Banner Fleet's reaction, especially by its nuclear submarines, to them, how the Kremlin was linked to any triggering of the whole process, and the like. Once Vitaly Yurkenko defected, coughing up Pelton and Edward Lee Howard as Soviet spies to improve Ames's capabilities, the Bureau's Robert Hanssen joined him in disclosing Anglo-American secrets, now that it was clear that they were targeting Sweden. Palme, who for three years, starting with their underwater intrusions of Hårsfjärden once he returned as Prime Minister, had sealed his fate by denying transshipment of 82 HAWK missiles, and other Bofors armaments through Sweden on November 17, 1985, proving once again that he was no Soviet stooge.

Having stumbled across the mechanism for destroying the Soviet Union, the rhetoric against Palme, and the focus of the Soviet surprise changed focus. Shortly after the statsminister was returned to power, an MI6 agent, apparently Gordievsky, had come to Stockholm to inform the Swedish military commander-in-chief, General Lennart Ljung, that Palme was another Babrak Karmal - the KGB agent who had handed over Afghanistan to Moscow - warning him to be on the lookout for a similar move. Later in October, another SIS officer, who had helped capture in 1984 NATO spy Arne Treholt in Oslo, and whose handler had been double agent Yuzhin, reported that he had discovered Palme's agenda for his meeting in April with Gorbachev, indicating that he wanted to establish a Nordic Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone which, if adopted, would oblige Norway and Denmark to leave the organization. The statsminister was alleged to have discussed the development with Norwegian and Danish Social Democratic leaders.

After Palme stopped the HAWK missile shipment, though, all the talk turned to his being disposed of. Jennone Walker, CIA head in the Stockholm Embassy, even raised the possibility with Swedish officers at its Christmas Party, inducing them to blurt out that the statsminister was a traitor who had to be reckoned with. In January and February 1986, Bror Perä, a known mercenary who was apparently approached about the possibility of assassinating Palme, but turned it down because he would be an obvious suspect, devoted his talents to writing "Framtidsvision - Satir av Nikodemus P." for the first issue of Kulturnytt, claiming that the statsminister was a Soviet stooge, like Afghanistan's Amin, who had outlived his usefulness: "Lella Olle does not understand how anybody can shoot him, but the Party Police says that we can have dictatorship now." Seven years later, when the Swedish police finally got round to interviewing him about the assassination, he shot himself.

The importance of having something like an assassination to trigger the showdown with the Soviets had been discovered inadvertently when the US Navy went after the hijackers of the Italian liner Achille Lauro, and killers of invalid Leon Klinghofer, a Jew, in the process - the dry run for what Lehman, Vice Admiral Frank Kelso and North were planning for Northern Europe. It turns out, according to Ari Ben-Menashe's Profits of War, that the plot was an Israeli one that it had arranged with Abu Abbas's Palestinian faction through contacts with Abu Nidal in London. (For their trouble, they were killed in the lead-up, and execution of the latest Iraq war, as soon as the Mossad and CIA could respectively get their hands on them.) The killing of Klinghofer was a terrible mistake for which Abbas later apologized profusely, and to the satisfaction of Arafat and the Israelis. North pushed successfully the idea of using Navy Seals to storm the ship, aircraft from the Saratoga capturing the hijackers - the ship had actually already left port - while they were attempting to escape on an EgyptAir flight, and obtaining bugged intelligence from President Mubarak's phone about all its details. When the plane was forced to land in Italy, Reagan was ecstatic, uttering his famous counterterrorism slogan: "You can run, but you can't hide."

To institutionalize the process North had used to achieve this success, Reagan was persuaded in January to issue National Security Decision Directive NSDD-207 which operationally strengthened North's Sub-Group of the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG) which had been created in April 1984, "OSG-TIWG was authorized to bypass normal communications channels," Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall have written in Cocaine Politics, " and deal with counterterrorists directly; it was even given its own secure *FLASH' communication network to do so." (p. 140) North was appointed to the new Office to Combat Terrorism, and provided with two key members of Vice President Bush's Task Force staff, Robert Earl and Craig Coy, to assist him.

The new target of North's organization - what the HAWK missile fiasco caused, and CIA Deputy Director John McMahon obliged Reagan to sign an ex post facto, illegal finding to justify Agency participation in on December 5, 1985 - resulted in all kinds of changes, indicating just how dangerous plans were becoming. NSA Bud McFarlane resigned, being replaced by his deputy Vice Admiral John Poindexter, because he could not be a part of any covert operation which was going to take out a democratically elected head of government. The Consortium, the sweet, little arms operation that had been operating for the advantage of Tel Aviv, was now so committed to such elaborate schemes that Israeli David Kimche, and Rafael Eitan resigned, replaced by go-for-broke Amiran Nir and Major David Walker. In London, Thatcher forced the resignation of SOD Heseltine - the only Cabinet member likely to speak up because of any unexpected surprises, especially in his field of authority - by overruling his rescue plan for Westland helicopters. His replacement was George Younger, the MP for Ayr since 1964, and his first field experience with the MoD would be observing NATO's Anchor Express Exercise around Narvik in early March.

Thanks to the attacks that Abu Nidal's men made on the El Al check-in booths at the Rome and Vienna airports over the Christmas holidays - making individual security the highest priority in counterterrorism - NATO officials were obliged to step up countermeasures all over Europe. The Times warned readers that there could be "...an increase in Libyan-sponsored terrorism over the next few months." Then there were alerts that Jewish, Israeli, and American targets, especially in the Nordic countries, faced imminent attacks. 10,900 Americans in Holland were warned to be on their guard. "Swedish authorities said earlier that Interpol had warned Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian governments that terrorist commandos may be set to strike." England was not immune to the attacks either, as James Defence Weekly claimed that several KGB agents were always at the Greenham Common where the CND was protesting the installation of intermediate-range missiles, and its strength could be increased on short notice by airborne troops from the USSR. In fact, Michael Binyon soon had a regular column in The Times, entitled "Terrorism and America", calling for NATO to stand up to the increasing dangers, as Washington was doing.

As Europe seemed to be reeling under threats by the Soviets and their clients - what appeared to threaten the very survival of governments like that of Mrs.Thatcher - American authorities continued to indicate that Palme was the source of the problem. To demonstrate that all Scandinavians were not Soviet stooges, Mark Austad, a former CIA agent, and Washington's ambassador to Helsinki, successfully sued Private Eye for so claiming he said a few years before. Thanks to help from London, and American right-winger Lyndon LaRouche, the European Workers' Party started putting up posters around Stockholm, claiming that Palme was a traitor who should be eliminated. Little wonder that one of its members, Victor Gunnarsson, became the first suspect of Palme's assassination.

Given this environment, American security officials leaned on their Swedish counterparts to let them do whatever they wanted. Apparently, they wanted to recruit Soviet spy Stig Bergling, while still in prison for his crimes, as the fallguy for the assassination when he was on prison release to get married. "Rod" Carlson, who had been involved with Oleg Penkovsky during the Missile Crisis, and was now in Stockholm to remedy the shortcomings of its solution, hoped that he could persuade Bergling to flee to Moscow for his honeymoon when the statsminister's shooting was taking place. To make the most of possibilities, Ms. Walker had CIA experts, working with Säpo's (Sweden's Security Service) section for Company Defense (FSG), install a bug on the KGB's telephone in the Embassy, and a bug in its residency on the night of the shooting. Given the high level of activity by the Agency on the night, it was obvious it knew what was happening.

The only problems that had occurred in setting up Palme's murder were that Bergling was not willing to take the bait, and the conspiracy had the greatest difficulty in finding a hitman - what requires a bit more historical inquiry.

"The Kennedy assassination," Ken Connor has concluded in Ghost Force: The Secret History of the SAS, "has been the catalyst for the spread of British influence through SAS bodyguard training." (p. 354) Britain's expertise had been developed while fighting rearguard actions during the dismantling of the empire, starting in Malaya, and had come home to roost during the troubles in Northern Ireland. Unlike America's special forces and Secret Service, the Special Air Service (SAS) is neither a regular combat unit nor a cumbersome surveillance service. It is an elite corps of individuals who can melt into a crowd with deadly precision if the situation warrants or can do a stake out to protect a threatened target. "The contrast between the Delta Force at Desert One (during the Iranian hostage rescue mission) and the SAS at the Iranian Embassy could not have been more marked," Connor added. The contrast became even more marked when the 14 Intelligence Company, male and female operatives who could blend even more successfully into the surroundings, was formed.

While British expertise in training bodyguards was in much demand, MI6 only provided it in areas where national interests were involved. The protection of rulers in the Gulf states come most readily to mind, but Britain also supplied, it seems, bodyguard training and reassessment to Sweden (Connor, p. 154ff.), the neutral country in Scandinavia becoming increasingly important as the Cold War became an institutionalized stalemate in Central Europe. The Soviet position on the North Cape, and in the Barents and Baltic Seas could permit an end run by its land, air and naval forces which could threaten the whole security of Europe. These concerns became all the more real when Olof Palme returned to power in 1982, the Social Democratic leader long suspected by Western intelligence agencies of being a Soviet stooge. (Golitsyn, p.55ff.) To help compensate for this potential weakness, the Foreign Office agreed to supply Stockholm with bodyguard training assistance to see that the King, Justice Minister, and Statsminister were not assassinated.

About the most secret training and reassessment of bodyguards that Britain supplied on site in Sweden, Connor was a bit too candid about the armed policemen and civilians involved, and what they were capable of when queried about their expertise for the job:

Just to be on the safe side, however, we carried out a simple test on the first day on the live firing range. The results were indescribable. The safest place for any attacker would have been in front of the target, for that was the only part of the range they seemed unable to hit. (p. 158)

To make up for their inexperience, they were given two weeks close-quarter battle (CBQ) training in the Swedish equivalent of Hereford's SAS Killing House during which they each fired at least 1,500 rounds. Periodically, a reassessment team in mufti would return unannounced to Stockholm to assess how they were performing, and to correct any deficiency with more training.

Connor, however, was surprisingly silent about many developments, and some sources, especially Geraghty, in his explanation. With there being such a demand for British-trained bodyguards, the Crown was hard pressed to supply them even for its own people, much less important foreign officials. While the Royal Military Police was created to protect senior British officers, and high-risk diplomats from assassination, private security companies, especially David Walker's KMS, Ltd, continued to perform functions despite Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's preferences otherwise after Naeve's assassination because of the demands on manpower, particularly during and after the Falklands War. (Tony Geraghty, The Bullet Catchers, pp. 217-8) KMS could supply just the right kind of bodyguard, whether it be to accompany an important guest to a diplomatic dinner, to stop a seeming assassin from crashing the party, or to protect a guest afterwards who wanted to thank the hostess with a gift from a specialty shop in a crowded part of town.

All bodyguard missions, though, did not work out as well as their promoters, and publicists planned. With trained bodyguards becoming such an impediment to potential assassins, it was hardly surprising that terrorists started concentrating on infiltrating, or rendering useless security, especially in Third World countries, and around guerrilla leaders. Israel's Mossad took the lead in such operations, sometimes using subverted bodyguards within the target's entourage. While the exploits of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, especially those of the Abu Nidal faction, readily come to mind in this regard - e.g., the assassination of moderate PLO negotiator Said Hammami in his London office in 1978 - the Israelis were also spreading the technique to the Contras in Central America. The network was centered around senior Israeli intelligence officer Mike Harari who had been transferred to Mexico City after he had assassinated the wrong man while murdering alleged Palestinian terrorists. (Scott and Marshall, p. 73)

There, Harari's modus operandi fell upon fertile ground, once the NSC's Oliver North hired in December 1984 KMS to carry out covert operations, and to train terrorists in the wake of the failed attempt to assassinate contrary Contra leader Eden Pastora the previous spring. Thanks to Harari's connections to Panama's Manuel Noreiga, and David Walker's to Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr., North's Contras were soon killing Sandinistas and their Soviet supporters with efficient abandon, part of the ever-widening Operation Condor that the Argentine military junta, and Chile's General Augusto Pinochet had put together in the aftermath of Allende's overthrow. (Mary Helen Spooner, Soldiers in a Narrow Land, p. 122) In the process, the leader of the attempts to assassinate Pastora, Felipe Vidal Sanitago aka Charles Morgan was left without a mission. According to Cocaine Politics, Vidal was a Cuban-born CIA contract agent who advocated international terrorism against pro-Castro targets while he conducted drug trafficking, activities for which he was arrested at least seven times. (p. 17)

The trouble with Vidal was that he was even more dangerous when he was without a mission. When the Kennedy administration decided to close down all domestic operations by the anti-Castro Cubans in April 1963, Vidal started plotting in Dallas with the cashiered, rabidly anti-communist Major General Edwin Walker to kill the President at Soviet expense. (Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason,pp. 636-8) Vidal, a key member of Alpha 66, then worked with John Martino, a CIA-Mafia operative, and William Pawley, co-founder of the Flying Tigers, to exfiltrate Soviet officers from Cuba who would claim that their superiors had never removed all missiles from the island as the settlement of the Missile Crisis required. When CIA officially decided in June that William Harvey would run things, Vidal and his people were reduced to building up the credentials of decoys LHO, Giancana himself, and the Corsican Mafia as JFK's killers.

When Palme marked his re-election, with communist support, as statsminister in the fall of 1985 by reasserting Swedish armed neutrality against any incursions, even from the West (Quoted in Ola Tunander, Cold Water Politics, p. 118, though n. b. Milton Leitenberg's editorial addition to make it seem as Palme still only suspected the Soviets.), and by making good on the promise on November 17th when he stopped the illegal transshipment of 80 HAWK missiles through the country that North had arranged, Vidal, who had escaped apparently a Castro firing squad in April 1964 because of his cooperation with his chief of personal security General Fabian Escalante, was given at least the task of providing cover for Palme's assassination.

A few days later in Stockholm's Continental Bistro, Vidal now aka Charles Morgan, alias Peter Brown, asked a colleague from the civil war in Robert Mugabe's Rhodesia, Jovan von Birchan, if he would be willing to carry out an assassination. Morgan then explained that he was willing to pay him $2,000,0000 for shooting the statsminister. In January, Morgan persisted with the offer, much to von Birchan's surprise, adding that the operation was going ahead without the worry of any police interference. (Swedish military intelligence officer Joel Haukka's report, "Samtal med Jovan von Birchan, 4 april 1986") At the same time, another CIA agent, "Milan", tried to recruit Kenneth Neilberg, a narcotics informant for Säpo, to perform the hit under similar conditions.

When Neilberg backed out of the plan, Morgan and "Milan" then apparently went to London to look for assassins, as Duncan Campbell explained long after the assassination:

I was told by three independent sources that recruiters for the killing - variously described as a group of Swedish businessmen, with Finns and Germans also involved, possibly financed by a South African group - had approached mercenaries and arms dealers in London in order to find a suitable "hit man". ("MI6, Whistleblowers in Baltic Battle," New Statesman,June 17, 1988, p. 7)

The group was the arms cartel, YGGDRASIL, which would consider at its January 1986 meeting in a Wiltshire country house what to do about Palme, what would depend upon what the statsminister was attempting in the Middle East. "All the sources agreed," Campbell added, "that the former SAS and other possible killers approached had turned down the contract, and had then passed details of the approaches to Special Branch or MI6 contacts. MI6 had passed a warning to Sapo, the Swedish secret police." The source who was most sure that no one had been recruited was former SB commander Rollo Watts who now worked for Saladin Security, the cover company for KMS.

Sapö was completely reassured of British trustworthiness by SIS's message since it had long been told by MI5's Peter Wright that since the Suez fiasco it was no longer in the assassination business. In fact, right when Wright was telling the CIA's operational leadership in 1959 of what was now its responsibility (Spycatcher, p. 154), he came to Stockholm, despite its neutrality policy, to conduct an ENGULF operation for the Swedish Signals Intelligence Service on the visiting Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze to read its cipher communications. (pp. 113-4) This was a most dangerous mission for MI6 to promote since it had just been caught trying to determine the cruiser's propellers when it had visited Portsmouth, resulting in the death of frogman Buster Crabbe. The new mission was to determine what the Soviets were secretly planning when they talked to the Swedes. When it passed without either incident, or new insight, Stockholm was most relieved, though for the wrong reasons. Moscow had more important plans with Castro to exploit.

The cartel's planning had been triggered by the defection of the KGB's Oleg Gordievsky, and the feedback US Navy Commander John Bothwell, civilian intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard, and former NSA analyst Ronald Pelton had supplied to Moscow, much of it via Israel. While the KGB had known since the appearance of Golitsyn's book that the West was plotting Palme's assassination, it just being a question of timing, the decision by CIA's Ames, a key player in Operation Courtship which was to catch Moscow in the fatal deception, in the spring of 1985 to start spying for the Soviets indicated that the time was growing near. To get a better fix on the precise moment, FCD Vladimir Kryuchkov arranged Gordievsky's "miraculous defection" which Cambridge's Professor Christopher Andrew has made a career of exploiting. (For the latest, see The Sword and the Shield, pp. 434-6.) Of course, Moscow went all out to make him the worst traitor, adding his name to Golitsyn's of those under sentence of death, and Gordievsky was spilling his guts to anyone who would listen, especially MI6 agents at 'The Fort', about what Moscow's agents of influence, starting with the Swedish statsminister, were attempting. (For more on this, see David Leppard, "The Spy Who Panics the Left," The Sunday Times, February 26, 1995, Focus, pp. 12-3.)

Once Gordivesky had saturated the English market with the alleged treachery of Palme, Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Willy Brandt, and others, he went to Stockholm, warning General Ljung that the statsminister was indeed a Soviet spy. This confirmed what the Navy's leading brass had long claimed, setting off moves, especially by Commodore von Hofsten, to limit Palme's treachery until he could be unseated. Then Gordievsky went to Washington to brief DCI Casey for President Reagan's benefit about Soviet intentions on the eve of the Geneva Conference, what led to such a chilling of relations that Michael Gorbachev was warning of a revanchist war by the West at the February 1986 CPSU Congress. By this time, Vitali Yurchenko, another "defector", had come, and gone back to Moscow after encouraging Washington and London about the security of their plotting by informing them of Pelton's and Pollard's spying, by returning with sleeper double agent Valeri Martynov as part of his entourage, and by checking with Ames about the latest details. (For a description of this, except for CIA self-serving denials about false defectors, see David Wise, Nightmover, p. 135ff.) The losses of these assets was more than made up by reviving the spying of the FBI's Robert Hanssen in Operation Courtship.

In this context, the American and UK representatives apparently hijacked the January 1986 meeting of NATO's Special Operations Planning Staff (SOPS), the secret organization to coordinate covert operations by Stay-behind-Forces in case of a Soviet attack, to make it look as if it and YGGDRASIL had already agreed to Operation Tree, the cutting down of the "Palm Tree". This claim depends upon documents that Oswald Le Winter, apparently Duane "Dewey" Clarridge's Deputy of CIA operations in Europe, and the Chief of NATO's Intelligence Tactical Assessment Centre (ITAC) at the time, has supplied, and Le Winter's reputation does not inspire confidence, as is borne out surprisingly in this case, unless one makes the necessary clairfications. Le Winter is best known for his changing tales about the so-called October Surprise by the newly-elected Reagan administration (Vankin and Whelan, pp. 170-2), and the death of Princess Diana. And these documents do not support Le Winter's claims either, only showing ITAC's chief setting up the cartel group as the fall guy for the Stockholm shooting, once SOPS had agreed to send him to the Wiltshire meeting.

Then the American and British representatives told the meeting that Operation Tree had to proceed because their joint intelligence efforts had discovered Palme's agenda with Gorbachev on April 1st, what threatened to open up all of Scandinavia to a Soviet takeover. "SOPS has been assured that arms length will be maintained to ensure deniability," the document added. "Project management is local, technicians imported. SOPS requires details to be kept fully compartmented on need to know basis." Of course, the other representatives were completely taken aback by what Washington, and London were demanding, reaffirming that the relationship between the two groups was completely informal, but the American and British representatives kept hammering away about the need to take action. Despite Palme's stopping of the HAWK missiles to Teheran, what the American representative called "his dubious role in the Iran conflict," the statsminister was allegedly supplying weapons grade uranium to New Dehli, what he had long denied despite the claims of Chris Mosey in The Observer, and Christer Larsson in Ny Teknik. (Chris Mosey, "Secret nuclear weapons row breaks in Sweden," April 28, 1985, p. 17) The British representative thought that agent of influence Palme's actions, and the Vatican's aid to the IRA were threatening the UK's very sphere of influence, what Le Winter was assigned to stop by getting the revelant intelligence services engaged.

Under the circumstances, Rollo Watts' assurances seemed most problematical, but they had the desired effect. When MI6 informed Stockholm of the unsuccessful attempts to recruit Palme's killer, Säpo was most eager to have KMS conduct another reassessment of the statsminister's bodyguards to make sure they were up to the task. Watts apparently had no idea that Operation Tree had moved to the top of Anthony Duff's agenda as he reorganized MI5 in the wake of the Brighton bombing, and the Anglo-Irish Agreement. (Peter Taylor, The Brits: The War against the IRA, p. 248ff.) Ever since the Hyde Park bombings in the summer of 1982, for which Captain Simon Hayward of the Life Guards had been recruited to carry out reprisal killings against the IRA in South Armagh, resulting in the so-called Shoot-to-Kill murders, pressure had been mounting on Downing Street to take even more reckless action to stem the criticism. Hayward's efforts had been most indiscriminate, as the European Court of Human Rights established recently in the case of Gervaise McKerr, and even Britain had been obliged to appoint John Stalker, Deputy Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police Force, to investigate the shootings after a 'Diplock' court, Judge McDermott sitting alone, had found RUC constable John Robinson innocent of murdering Seamus Grew in another incident in which Hayward was apparently driving the car.

While the trail of Hayward's direction of the shootings had grown cold, Stalker's pursuit of his role, especially the tapes of the shooting of Michael Tighe in a Lurgan hayshed, was so persistent that MI5 was obliged to join the stonewalling of their release, forcing Stalker to prepare only an Interim Report about the shootings. In the meantime, Hayward had started training for the 14 Intelligence Company despite the shortened middle and ring fingers on his injured right hand, adopting the name Captain James Rennie as part of his new persona. (For typical disinformation about the new code name, and the clumsy control he had allegedly adopted by choice with weapons in his right hand, see his Operators, frontispiece and ff.) By the time Stalker started preparing his Interim Report, Rennie was already working as the South Detachment's Operations Officer in Northern Ireland.

When the West started planning Palme's assassination in late November, Rennie's mission took a dramatic turn from trying to stop the East Tyrone IRA from blowing up rural, undermanned police stations to reviving Stalker's Shoot-to-Kill inquiry, what would give him an alibi for the Stockholm shooting. After the Castledawson Police Station was shot up on December 9th, young, innocent Francis Bradley, who, according to Father Raymond Murray in The SAS in Ireland, the RUC had attempted to recruit as an informer in order to catch reservist R. J. Evans' assassin (p. 348ff.), suddenly became the object of most threatening police action during which he was told he would not live to see his 21st birthday in February. A young Protestant man warned him "... that a certain named person was out to get him with the help of a well-known policeman in Magherafelt." (p. 350) About who that person might be, Seamus O'Connor, a friend of his, said in a statement after his murder: "I met Francis Bradley in McVeys' Cafe. When I was in the shop playing a poker machine, an individual was staring at us. He was 5'10'' tall, well built, 30-35 years of age." (Quoted from p. 351.)

The reason for the delay was so that the Palme assassination could be connected with NATO's biennal Anchor Express Exercise, starting in March in Norway's far north, what Navy Secretary would use to trigger a first strike against the Soviets (Operation Armageddon), once its attack submarines in the Barents and Baltic Seas, and the battle groups of Task Force Eagle along the North Cape had moved into position. In the meantime, Rennie had been obliged to improve his credentials as a hitman by permitting the premature arrest, despite assurances, of IRA informer Frank Hegarty, who knew the locations of the latest arms shipments from Libya in the Republic, in order to show that the Anglo-Irish Agreement was working, what led to Hegarty's murder by the IRA, and Rennie losing effectiveness as a Ops Officer. (pp. 374-6)

The delay, though, did improve apparently Rennie's ability to carry out the statsminister's shooting, as by then Teheran had gotten feedback from North's people about why the HAWK missiles and other weapons never arrived, as Richard Reeves explained afterwards in "The Palme Obsession": "An Iranian military delegation came to Stockholm to protest the stopping of deliveries. That was on Feb. 4, 1986, three weeks before Palme's murder." (The New York Times Magazine, March 1, 1987, p. 56) For good measure, 12 days later, Commander Bothwell was arrested in Britain for allegedly leaking information to Israel about SOPS efforts from Athens to cause economic unrest in Poland, East Germany, and the USSR, operations which both the Pentagon, and Yurchenko, now safely back at work in Moscow, were most aware of, causing the defection of the latter's subordinate, Colonel Viktor Gundarev, and his family for their safety. (Ronald Ostrow and Tyler Marshall, "Defection of KGB official linked to arrest of American in Britain," The Boston Globe, Feb. 22, 1986, p. 3) The arrest was to fool Soviet counterintelligence that SOPS was completely involved throughout the Mediterreanean when it was going all out in the North.

Two days later, Rennie apparently led the squad which so coldly executed Bradley in order to help give him an alibi for the Stockholm shooting ten days later, what they even had to lie about more than a year later when the statsminister's assassin still remained at large. While the tale of horrors need not be repeated here (For those who still want to know almost everything, see Mark Urban, Big Boys' Rules, pp. 214-6), his execution was a deliberately aggressive action authorized by the security chiefs, requiring a two-week stakeout of the target area, and carried out with withering fire, once Bradley, with his back to his assassins, knelt down to pick up the weapons he had been instructed apparently by the IRA to move.

Of course, nationalist people, and press were livid over the incident, as Father Murray has duly recorded in his notes (note 123, p. 470), just after the one he has on Hayward's later difficulties in Sweden. The newspapers were still harping on Bradley's execution when the Stockholm shooting occurred, and Jo Thomas, The New York Times correspondent, revived the controversy under most dishonest claims when Palme's assassin was not quickly caught. (See "In Ulster the 'Shoot-to-Kill' rumors will not die," The New York Times, March 17, 1986, and "Bloody Ireland: a reporter chronicles her attempt to investigate in Northern Ireland - and describes the forces that conceal the secrets of a dirty war," Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1988.) Instead of being discharged from her position for refusing to follow official censorship, what even threw Father Murray off of what Thomas was up to (pp. 319-20), she was promoted by The Times for spreading its disinformation at critical junctures.

By the time Rennie's bodyguard reassessors reached Stockholm, the place was awash with potential assassins, and rumors of Palme's assassination, what Edinburgh's Professor John Erickson had increased the previous month by claiming that the statsminister's was still offering the Soviets sanctuary for their intrusions into Swedish waters. While Palme was on a visit to Sweden's north, the reassessment team, using walkie-talkies, set up shop on the morning of February 26 near where the Palmes' apartment in the Old Town was located, obviously having been informed of its whereabouts beforehand - what few Swedes actually knew. Witness Jarl N told the Granskning Kommission investigating the crime years later that he had seen a dangerous-looking ("farlig ut") man near the Pharmacy, speaking a kind of Swiss-German to his colleague, and they were both carrying walkie-talkies. "He was 185-190 cm tall, and had pale-coloured hair."

Actually, it would be SOP for the reassessment team to use a kind of German rather than English so as not to tip off Palme's bodyguards that they were under scrutiny, and the team would certainly need walkie-talkies to keep track of what they were attempting. Another witness, Marie R, added to the credibility of Jarl's testimony by stating that she had seen a man with a walkie-talkie too, standing right outside the Palmes' apartment the same day, though she, like other witnesses, did not know so at the time. She described him as tall, a security guard type of possibly German or Austrian origin, and who had blond, straw-colored hair. Another witness saw a sitting man with a walkie-talkie right outside the apartment about an hour before the Palmes left for Grand Cinema, wondering if he were part of some security contingent. "Leif C described the man as a Swede, a light-haired, closely cropped man 20-30 years old and 180 cm tall."

Of course, it was when the Palmes were returning home after having seen the movie 'Mozart' that the Prime Minister was fatally assassinated, and his wife merely scratched by the bullet shot her way, an attempt apparently to confuse people about the shooting having been a professional job. When Mrs. Palme was calm enough to talk to the press, she said that her husband's assassin was one of the men she had seen snooping around the apartment the last few days.

While Palme had been easily killed, it would take some doing to prevent things from spining out of control, much less cover it up.

Enlightenment

Do you feel like you're living in some Orwellian nightmare? Or perhaps you feel as if you're plugged into The Matrix? Well if so, you've come to the right place. No matter how messed up you thought the world was, by the time you've finished reading some of the things I've found on my travels in Cyberspace you'll realise that 1984 was just a typo!

A note to the non-ravers out there: codshit is
NOT a derogatory or insulting term and bears no relation in offensiveness to its four-letter cousin, it's a word used to describe the nonsense that people sometimes talk when they are off their heads. To understand what codshit is watch the film Human Traffic.

Comments are welcome, but before you waste perfectly useful energy abusing me please take a moment to reflect on the basic right we all have to express ourselves!

Please remember that I am not telling you what to think or believe, take everything you read here with a large grain of salt!

Wisdom

If you confront the Universe with good intentions in your heart it will reflect that and reward your intent... usually... It just doesn't always do it in the way you expect.
.: G'kar :.

So there, we have figured it out, go back to bed America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here, here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed America, here's American Gladiators. Here's 56 channels of it. Watch these pituitary retards bang their fuckin skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go America, you are free... to do as we tell you.
.: Bill Hicks :.

Let there be no doubt that the people of the free world are engaged in a war... In the next few years, we are either going to see the people of the free world rise up against these fascists, now setting the stage for global war, or we are going to see the end of democracy as we know it with martial law the end result.
.: David Shayler :.

Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.
.: Albert Einstein :.